Twitter self service ads

Twitter is releasing a new self service advertising system that will enable advertisers to manage their marketing campaigns and budget without having to go through the Twitter team. The automated system, which is due to go live later this year, was announced on Thursday and will only be available to American Express card users.

In a bid to attract potential advertisers to the unique system, American Express will buy $100 in Twitter ads for each of the first 10,000 qualified businesses in the US. Twitter will be calling the ads ‘Promoted Products’, which will start to appear in late March.

This new advertising strategy is more evidence of Twitter’s aspirations to monetise the platform much like its rival Facebook.

Pseudonyms and verification from Facebook

Facebook is launching the ability for public figures to become verified as well as the option to have a nickname displayed instead of their real name. Those who have verified accounts will be more prominent in the ‘People to Subscribe to’ suggestions, which will in turn result in more subscribers and more advertising possibilities for products to be promoted via their Timelines. However, unlike its rivals Facebook will not have a badge or a symbol to show regular users that the account is verified.

As for the new pseudonyms option, if users to opt to use a nickname it’s likely that it will be displayed alongside their real name - i.e. Real Name (Pseudonym) - or have their real name in the ‘About’ section.

EU court rules that social networks can’t be forced to filter content

On Thursday the European Union’s highest court ruled that social network sites could not be forced to filter out copyrighted content such as music. It was decided that any system put in place to filter content would fail to adequately protect the personal data of social network users. The EU Court of Justice (ECJ) said:

“The owner of an online social network cannot be obliged to install a general filtering system, covering all its users, in order to prevent the unlawful use of musical and audio visual work.”

The court went on to explain:

“Such preventive monitoring would therefore require active observation of the files stored by users with the owner of the social network.”

As such, the filtering system would require the social network owner to carry out general monitoring of the information stored on its servers, something which is prohibited by the E-Commerce Directive.

Music industry to sue Google

In December the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) accused Google of making huge profits from piracy and even went on to allege that Google were obstructing the efforts of rights holders to reduce the availability of illegal content.

The music industry is now considering suing Google for allegedly abusing its dominant market position to distort the market for online music. Recording Industry groups such as IFPI and RIAA want Google to degrade links to pirate websites in its search results. The IFPI has got a “highly confidential and preliminary legal opinion” to see if they can force Google to take more anti-piracy measures through a lawsuit.